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Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction
Journal of Literacy Research, Spring 2005 by Stahl, Steven A, Heubach, Kathleen M
This paper reports the results of a two-year project designed to reorganize basal reading instruction to stress fluent reading and automatic word recognition. The reorganized reading program had three components: a redesigned basal reading lesson that included repeated reading and partner reading, a choice reading period during the day, and a home reading program. Over two years of program implementation, students made significantly greater than expected growth in reading achievement in all 14 classes. All but two children who entered second grade reading at a primer level or higher (and half of those who did not) were reading at grade level or higher by the end of the year. Growth in fluency and accuracy appeared to be consistent over the whole year. Students' and teachers' attitudes toward the program were positive. In evaluating individual components, we found that self-selected partnerings seemed to work best and that children chose partners primarily out of friendship. Children tended to choose books that were at or slightly below their instructional level. In addition, children seemed to benefit instructionally from more difficult materials than generally assumed, with the greater amount of scaffolding provided in this program.
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Fluent and automatic word recognition has traditionally been considered the hallmark of a good reader. Yet, according to Allington (1983a), traditional conceptions of reading have ignored fluency as a goal. Instead, traditional classes have placed greater emphasis on accurate reading of increasingly more difficult material rather than fluent reading.
This article documents an attempt to reorganize second-grade classes around the goal of fluency. We choose second grade because we see this grade as a transition between the simple and predictable material used in first grade to teach children to decode and the more complex stories and expository text used in third grade and above.
Stages of Reading Development
Underlying our belief in the importance of fluency development in second grade is our view that reading development is comprised of a series of stages, where development in one stage is dependent on concepts learned in previous stages and a prerequisite for development in subsequent stages. The advantage of a stage model is that it provides a map describing expectations at different levels of development.
Stage models assume that reading is qualitatively different at different stages of development. That is, a child who is at one stage will have different skills, knowledge, and beliefs about reading than a child at a higher or a lower stage. At each stage, the knowledge and skills needed for the next stage are developed. There have been a number of stage models of reading, including those of Doerhing and Aulls (1979), Downing (1979), and McCormick and Mason (1986). We will limit our discussion to Chall's (1983) model because this model essentially contains the basic features of the others with greater elaboration.
Chall (1983) described the development of reading ability in six stages, ranging from prereading to the advanced reading typical of graduate students. Her approach is a global one, encompassing the development of decoding, comprehension, and critical evaluation. Because it is global, Chall's model describes broad trends in children's development as readers. Her stages are as follows:
* Emergent Literacy: In this stage, which Chall called "Readiness," the child develops concepts about the forms and functions of literacy. Recent research has suggested that four areas are most important for success in initial reading: (1) phoneme awareness, or the ability to manipulate sounds in spoken words; (2) print concepts, or the awareness of the functions of print, such as directionality, print conventions, and some knowledge of spelling patterns in the language; (3) letter knowledge, or knowledge of the alphabet; and (4) knowledge of the language (vocabulary and syntax) that one is learning to read.
* Decoding: The student begins to learn about sound-symbol correspondences. The student's reading performance here is "glued to the text" in that she or he is trying to carefully reproduce what the text says. It often sounds like "grunting and groaning" because the child is not yet fluent.
* Confirmation and Fluency: In this stage, the student learns to decode words fluently and accurately and to orchestrate the use of syntactic and semantic information in text to confirm word recognition. In this stage, the child moves from the short, simple, and possibly predictable texts of the Decoding stage to more complex texts with complex plots. At the end of this stage, children are viewed as able to decode much of what is in their knowledge base, limited mainly by vocabulary knowledge and world knowledge.
* Learning the New (Single Viewpoint): Here, students learn to use their reading skill to extract information from text. At this point, they are expected to learn from content area textbooks, with increasingly less teacher guidance.
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